The Unwanted AI Integration
Microsoft has aggressively integrated its generative AI assistant, Copilot, into nearly every aspect of the Edge browser. While the dedicated sidebar button is prominent, one of the most intrusive integrations is the “Ask Copilot” button that appears in the context menu. Whenever you highlight text on a webpage or right-click an image, the context menu is unnecessarily elongated by AI prompts offering to summarize the text or generate similar images. If you do not use generative AI for your daily web browsing, these options simply add visual clutter to the menu and increase the chance of accidentally clicking the wrong tool. Fortunately, Microsoft provides a way to remove Copilot entirely from the context menu.
How to Remove “Ask Copilot” from the Context Menu
You can disable these specific AI integrations directly through the main Edge settings without needing to use complex registry edits or group policies.
- Open the Microsoft Edge browser.
- Click the three horizontal dots (…) in the top right corner of the window.
- Select Settings from the dropdown menu.
- In the left-hand sidebar, click on Sidebar (or Copilot and sidebar depending on your exact version of Edge).
- Under the “App and notification settings” section, click on Copilot.
- Look for the toggle switch labeled Show Copilot in context menu.
- Click the toggle to turn it Off.
Verifying the Change
The settings change takes effect immediately without requiring a browser restart. To test it, open any standard webpage and highlight a paragraph of text. Right-click the highlighted text. The context menu will now be noticeably shorter and cleaner, offering only the standard, traditional options like Copy, Search, and Print, completely free of any AI summarization prompts.